Misunderstands the Shield-Wall 415 The bury" (iii. 764), thus reversing the natural order. word that really gave me the clue was the escuz of Wace. It was obvious, I held, that, here as elsewhere," it must mean "shield"; and Mr. Freeman consequently saw in the passage an undoubted description of the "shield-wall" (iii. 763). Moreover, the phrase lever escuz is, in Wace, a familiar one, describing preparation for action, thus, for instance: Mult ueissiez Engleis fremir Armes saisir, escuz leuer. (11. 8030, 8033.) On the other hand, there are, in spite of Mr. Freeman, undoubted difficulties in rendering the passage as a description of the "shield-wall," just as there are in taking escuz to mean "barricades" (iii. 471). The result was that, perhaps unconsciously, Mr. Freeman gave the passage, in succession, two contradictory renderings (iii. 471, 763). Now, starting from the fact that the disputed passage supported, and also opposed both renderings, I arrived at the conclusion that it must represent some confusion of Wace's own. He had, evidently, himself no clear idea of what he was describing. But the whole confusion is at once accounted for if we admit him to have here also followed William of Malmesbury. His escuz-otherwise impossible to explain -faithfully renders the scuta of William, while the latter's testudo, though strictly accurate, clearly led him astray. The fact is that William of Malmesbury must have been quite familiar with the "shield-wall," if indeed he had seen seen the fyrd actually forming it." Wace, on the contrary, living later, and in Normandy instead of England, cannot have seen, or even understood, this famous formation, with which his cavalry fight of the twelfth century had nothing. 49 I mean, as I explained above, elsewhere in Wace. 44 He describes, as Mr. Freeman observed, King Henry bidding the English meet the charge of the Norman knights by standing firm in the array of the ancient shield-wall” (W. Rufus, ii. 411) in common. It is natural therefore that his version should betray some confusion, though his Fait en orent deuant closture clearly renders William of Malmesbury's conserta ante se scutorum testudine. There is no question as to William's meaning, for a tetudo of shields is excellent Latin for the shield-wall formed by the Romans against a flight of arrows. Moreover, the construction of William's Latin (conserta) accounts for that use by Wace of the pluperfect tense on which stress has been laid as proof that the passage must describe a "barricade." 45 That Wace could, occasionally, be led astray by misunderstanding his authority, is shown by his taking Harold to Abbeville, after his capture on the French coast, a statement which arose, in Mr. Freeman's opinion, "from a misconception of the words of William of Jumièges (iii. 224)." No one, I think, can read dispassionately the extracts I have printed side by side, without accepting the explanation I offer of this disputed passage in Wace, namely, that it is nothing but a metrical, elaborate, and somewhat confused paraphrase of the words of William of Malmesbury. Passing from William of Malmesbury to the Bayeux Tapestry, we find a general recognition of the difficulty of determining Wace's knowledge of it. I can only, like others, leave the point undecided. On the one hand, his narrative, as a whole, does not follow the Tapestry; on the other, it is hard to believe that the writer of 11. 8103-8138 had not seen that famous work. His description of the scene is marvellously exact, and the Tapestry phrase, in which Odo confortat pueros-often a subject of discussionis at once explained by his making the pueri whom Odo "comforted" to be Vaslez, qui al herneis esteient E le herneis garder deueient. Of these varlets in charge of the "harness" he had already spoken (11. 7963-7). The difficulty of accounting for Wace, 45 Cont. Rev., March, 1893, p. 351. Contradiction and Confusion 417 as a canon of Bayeux, being unacquainted with the Tapestry is, of course, obvious. But in any case he cannot have used it, as we do ourselves, among his foremost authorities. In discussing his use of William of Jumièges, we stand on much surer ground. It certainly strikes one as strange that in mentioning the obvious error by which Wace makes Harold receive his wound in the eye early in the fight (1. 8185), before the great feigned flight, Mr. Freeman does not suggest its derivation from William of Jumièges, though he proceeds to add (p. 771):— I need hardly stop to refute the strange mistake of William of Jumièges, followed by Orderic: "Heraldus ipse in primo militum progressu [Congressu,' Ord.] vulneribus letaliter confossus occu buit." But a worse instance of the contradictions involved by the patchwork and secondary character of Wace's narrative is found in his statement as to Harold's arrival on the field of battle. "Wace," says Mr. Freeman, "makes the English reach Senlac on Thursday night" (p. 441). So he does, even adding that Harold fist son estandart drecier Et fist son gonfanon fichier Iloc tot dreit ou l'abeie De la Bataille est establie. (11. 6985-8.) But Mr. Freeman must have overlooked the very significant fact that when the battle is about to begin, Wace tells a different story, and makes Harold only occupy the battlefield on the Saturday morning. Heraut sout que Normant vendreient E que par main se combatreient: Par matin les fist toz armer E a bataille conreer. (ll. 7768-72.) I have little doubt that he here follows William of Jumi B.H. EE èges: "[Heraldus] in campo belli apparuit mane," and that he was thus led to contradict himself. : Mr. Freeman had a weakness for Wace, and did not conceal it he insisted on the poet's "honesty." But "honesty" is not knowledge; and in dealing with the battle, it is not allowable to slur over Wace's imperfect knowledge. Mr. Freeman admits that "probably he did not know the ground, and did not take in the distance between Hastings and Battle" (p. 762). But he charitably suggests that "it is possible that when he says 'en un tertre s'estut li dus' he meant the hill of Telham, only without any notion of its distance from Hastings." But, in spite of this attempt to smooth over the discrepancy, it is impossible to reconcile Wace's narrative with that of Mr. Freeman. The latter makes the duke deliver his speech at Hastings, and then march with his knights to Telham, and there arm. But Wace imagined that they armed in their quarters at Hastings ("Issi sunt as tentes ale"), and straightway fought. The events immediately preceding the battle are far more doubtful and difficult to determine than could be imagined from Mr. Freeman's narrative, but I must confine myself to Wace's version. I have shown that his account is not consistent as to the movements of Harold, while as to the topography, "his primary blunder," as Mr. Freeman terms it, "of reversing the geographical order, by making William land at Hastings and thence go to Pevensey," together with his obvious ignorance of the character and position of the battle-field, must, of course, lower our opinion of his accuracy, and of the value of the oral tradition at his disposal. 12 46 To rely "mainly on such a writer, in preference to the original authorities he confused, or to follow him when, in Mr. Freeman's words, he actually "departs from contemporary authority, and merely sets down floating traditions nearly a hundred years after the latest events which he records"-betrays the absence of a critical faculty, or the consciousness of a hopeless cause. 46"It is upon Wace that we shall mainly rely." Cont. Rev., p. 344. Two Concocted Narratives 419 I NOTE ON THE PSEUDO-INGULF. OWE to my friend Mr. Hubert Hall the suggestion that the great battle described by the Pseudo-Ingulf as taking place between the English and the Danes in 870,-and all accepted as sober fact by Turner in his History of the Anglo-Saxons,-may be a concoction based on the facts of the battle of Hastings. This is also the theory Mr. Freeman advanced as to Snorro's story of the battle of Stamford Bridge. The coincidence is very striking. In both narratives the defending force is formed with "the dense shield-wall";' in both it breaks at length that formation; in both it is, consequently, overwhelmed; and in both cases the attacking force consists of horsemen and archers. But the most curious coincidence is found in the principal weapon of the defending force. In Snorro's narrative, as Mr. Freeman renders it, "a dense wood of spears bristles in front of the circle to receive the charge of the English horsemen ";" in the Pseudo-Ingulf the defending force "contra violentiam equitum densissimam aciem lancearum prætendebant." Such a defence savours of the days when the knight, fighting on foot with his lance, had replaced the housecarl with his battle-axe: it was not that of Harold's host, but one which we meet with in the twelfth century. 8 There are marks, however, in the Pseudo-Ingulf, of study not merely of the Battle of Hastings, but of William of Malmesbury's account of it. From him, it would seem, are "Ibid., p. 365. 8 Ed. 1684, p. 21. Cf. the fight at Jaffa, 5 Aug., 1192. Norm. Cong., iii. 367. |